Children stabbed to death in New York City home

AP, NEW YORK

A mother returned home to her luxury apartment building near Central Park on Thursday to find two of her small children stabbed to death in a bathtub and their nanny, with self-inflicted stab wounds, lying near them, police said.

The nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, was found near a knife. She was hospitalized in critical condition and was in police custody, and authorities said she is suspected of killing the children, who were pronounced dead at a hospital.

The children’s father, CNBC digital media executive Kevin Krim, who had been away on a business trip, was met by police at the airport on his return and was given an escort to the hospital where his loved ones had gathered.

Music therapist Rima Starr, who lives on the same floor as the Krim family, said she heard screams coming from the family’s apartment at around 5:30pm.

“There was some kind of screaming about: ‘You slit her throat!”’ she said. “It was horrible.”

The children’s mother, Marina Krim, had entered the dark apartment with her three-year-old and initially thought her other two children were out with the 50-year-old nanny, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

She went downstairs and asked the doorman at her building whether he had seen them leave.

When he said no, she went back upstairs and discovered her one-year-old son, Leo, and her six-year-old daughter, Lucia, in the bathroom, Kelly said. It is unclear how many times the children were stabbed.

The nanny was found on the bathroom floor with stab wounds to her neck, and a kitchen knife was close by, police said.

There was no water in the bathtub, they said.

Kelly said it is unclear how long the nanny had worked for the family and the police investigation was ongoing. No charges had been filed.

Starr, the family’s neighbor, said she believed the nanny had been hired just recently.

After police arrived, she said, the mother remained in the building’s lobby, screaming hysterically and clutching her surviving child.

The family had moved to New York from San Francisco within the last few years.

The children’s father was named general manager of CNBC’s digital media division in March, after working previously in digital media at Bloomberg. Their mother had a cooking blog and taught art classes to young children.